~ Reliving Childhood One Week at a Time

Sword in the Stone – Jon

Classic story. King Arthur is probably one of the best known kings there’s been. Which is interesting. Because there’s debate to whether or not he actually existed. Contemporary references to him are sparse, vague, and many historians aren’t convinced. Whatever. He’s in good company.

The main story that people know has something to do with killer rabbits and holy hand grenades. There’s lots of components to the legend but the most enduring part is the eponymous portion for this movie: The pulling of the sword from the stone. Which has almost nothing to do with this movie.

Really, this movie can be summed up as follows: Arthur is a squire for a jerk. Merlin knows he’s going to make it big and thus goes all Obi-Wan to train the boy. Things happen. He pulls the sword from the stone and lives happily ever after.

There’s not even a damsel in distress. As with so many other Disney movies, this one bombs the Bechdel Test. Instead, we get a highly educated owl, Archimedes. I really like this little guy. Partly because he shares a voice actor with Rabbit from the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which we’ll get to in another decade or so.

I do have to say I like Merlin in this too. He’s rather eccentric, but he’s very big on the brain over brawn. So he turns him into a fish, squirrel, and bird which puts him in situations he has to think his way out of since it’s such an unfamiliar situation. He teaches him things like gravity, which won’t be discovered for a few hundred years. But Merlin’s up on it, because he’s a time traveler.

After going through all this training, Arthur ends up still being a squire to Jerk who takes them to a tournament in London which will determine who the king is. Because apparently everyone forgot that the rightful king is supposed to be the one that pulls the sword from the stone. Which Arthur does.

And suddenly the plot (and everyone else) forgets about anything that’s gone on and it’s all about the sword being pulled. Which wasn’t pulled out thanks to anything Merlin taught Arthur, but rather, due to a complete brain fart. Way to subvert the majority of the movie.

There’s a lot of good points to this movie, but the rather random feeling to the whole movie was kinda a buzzkill.

Meanwhile, Sarah’s still in Disney Land so she’ll be catching up on posts when she gets back. As a note, while writing this post she sent me a text saying “Oh my gosh, I’m going to need some convincing to catch up on blog posts”. So if you like reading this blog, please, leave a comment or share this site so we know that the traffic we see isn’t just google bots.